Human Resources and Diversity Management professionals have long held that adding diversity to an organization is a necessary if not required practice. The rationale is varied depending on the place that organization is at, at the time. Some may be pre or post OFCCP audit and it is safe to say that their motivations may be different from the organization that is trying to mirror a demographic or is building a socially responsible model for diversity.

Many companies and organizations today are transcending from the required or imposed diversity initiative to one that adds a different kind of value to their culture and ultimately to the bottom line. It is the concept of adding “cultural competency”.

Like everything in this not so black and white world “cultural competency” means different things to different people. To some, adding “cultural competency” is the process of hiring highly qualified ethnic minorities and women into key roles in their company. To others, it is much more than that. Let me explain.

A few years, back I called on the sales manager of a large beverage company in Minnesota. In our meeting, I began to build the business case for increased diversity in that region. They had forty nine sales people. Forty six of them were white male and the remaining three were white females. Now for those of you who have never been to Minnesota, that may seem to be slightly misaligned with the local population but not by much. MN is generally regarded as the land of blonde hair, blue eyes and a whole lotta “you betchas” and “Oooo Yahhs”. However, the fact is this upper mid-western state is the home of the second largest population of ethnic Hmongs in the US and has a rapidly growing population of Somalian’s as well as Hispanics. These communities were and continue to be very much interested in the products that my prospective client had to offer.

The issue for business owners in these communities and ultimately the ethnic consumer was that they had a great deal of difficulty getting the sale people of this beverage company to actually call on them. In fact, at a business luncheon one day a Hmong grocer served me a product from this beverage company that was actually made in Mexico and printed in Spanish. When I asked him why he didn’t have local products on the shelf he told me that he couldn’t get the company to call on him. In order to put this very popular product on the shelf, he had to import it from Mexico to Minnesota. This was not a small convenience store but a full sized grocery. The vendor either didn’t value the business they would receive from this grocer, didn’t know how to get it or were afraid to approach them.

This unfortunately is not uncommon and is played out in countless markets across the US, every day.

So it seems that while the chemical makeup of this beverage company's sales team served one market very well, it completely ignored several others. Needless to say, that company also had a major competitor that is known as a leader in diverse initiatives. Their sales force had a high degree of cultural competency on the sales team, which is to say that they had Hmong sales professionals calling on Hmong grocers and Hispanic, Spanish speaking sales people calling on the largely Hispanic sections of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The latter company was “cleaning the clock” of the former in these markets. When the smoke cleared, it had garnered a major piece of the overall market in the process as well. This is just one example of cultural competency in action adding value to the bottom line. In another example, Allstate added billions to the company’s coffers by hiring Spanish speaking sales people to call on Hispanic communities. The list of recent successes in this area is quite long.

We know that cultural competency adds value in sales and marketing and it’s not much of a stretch to see how it can be valuable in other areas of the company as well from customer service to accounts receivable. The question for recruiters and hiring managers is quite different though. Just how do you interview and recruit for “cultural competency” and do so within the framework of federal, state and local laws and guidelines.

On the surface it seems quite simple. Take a look at your market, assess the demographic and hire people from that demographic to sell, market or service your products. Need to understand a largely black urban market? Hire an African American. Don’t speak Spanish? Any Spanish speaking sales person will do right? Well, not exactly.

There is danger in assuming that any Hispanic professional will help you sell or market to a largely Hispanic customer base. There are nuances within the Hispanic culture that will dictate one person’s success over another, every time. Here, culture may play a more important role than you think. A colleague and former executive with a Spanish language TV shopping channel once told me that the most successful TV Sales Personality they had in the Mexican market was not Mexican at all, but Cuban. This male “pitchman” out-performed his attractive, female Mexican counterparts by a wide margin. To understand why, you would need to know something about Hispanic culture and you might not get it by just being Hispanic or speaking Spanish.

One of the nation’s foremost authorities on Asian marketing for example is not Chinese or Korean or Asian at all. He is a middle-aged, white Jewish New Yorker that understands first hand the vast differences between all of the Asian markets. He has lived all over Asia and speaks many different languages. His perspective is not uniquely Japanese or Chinese but all of the countries doing business in Asia. Would hiring him do much for your EEO numbers? No. Would he bring extremely valuable Asian cultural competency to you company? You betcha!

SO it’s not so simple after all to add cultural competency to your organization. Just how do you do it? There are several strategies and resources at your disposal that can assist in this process. First and foremost though, it requires having cultural competency in your organization in the first place. Your recruiting team, internal or external should understand that diversity begins with an understanding of cultural competency and that doesn’t necessarily come from having a diverse team of recruiters and managers, though it is a step in the right direction.

Hiring candidates because they look or sound like they can bring cultural competency to our company or organization can be a big mistake. We have to be certain and for that we need to know what we are looking for and then interview for those specific competencies. We cannot rely on just seeing someone and assuming they will bring cultural competency to the role because of their ethnicity. As we know, looks can be deceiving.

A few years back I was at a social gathering and met a black gentleman who was in the advertising business. We were just about to launch Africareers.com and I asked him if he were interested in helping us advertise to the African American market. He told me he would refer me to a friend who was an expert in this area. When I inquired as to why he was not interested in the assignment he responded by telling me he knew absolutely nothing about the African American market. While he was obviously Black, he had just arrived from Tobago-Trinidad and wasn’t African or American.

Sometimes we make assumptions and often those assumptions are incorrect. If they are made in the hiring process, it can be a very expensive lesson indeed.

It is simply just not good enough to hire someone because of the color of their skin or gender or to make that an occupational qualification. Federal Law states that we as employers are required to give every qualified candidate regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age or sexual preference, an equal opportunity to compete for a position.

On one hand, the government is telling you to make sure you do not discriminate based on all the above categories and then on the other it is penalizing those companies that do not hire diverse candidates. Anyone that has had an OFCCP audit or a visit from any one of the other acronym agencies knows that it is a fine line that we walk.

Nearly everyday we receive a phone call from a recruiter or hiring manager where they tell us that they have to hire a Hispanic female (for example) for a particular open position. They will then go on about how everyone will be given an equal opportunity for this job (wink-wink) but the bottom line is they have to hire a Hispanic female to comply with some real, imagined or prospective challenge.

Here’s the deal. You cannot legally specify a preference for a Hispanic female or any other ethnic or gender related preference unless there are job related. The Job Description must clearly state that these required competencies are necessary to fulfill the requirements of the job. Cultural Competencies can become a bona-fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) if they are strictly job related .

Let’s go back to our “beverage company” example. We are looking for a Sales Representative to sell to grocers and shopkeepers in the Midway section of St. Paul MN. An area that is largely populated by ethnic Hmong’s.

Job requirements (cultural competencies)

An ability to speak the Hmong language is a requirement. If you speak Hmong, an unwritten language, you will most certainly be Hmong.
An understanding of the culture. Trying to sell when you are still at the “getting to know you stage” will be the end of your short sales career here.
Connected in the community. If they do not know who you are, or someone who knows you, your sales pitch may never be heard.
All of the other qualifications for the job that have nothing to do with cultural competency but nonetheless are required like 1 plus years of food or beverage sales experience. High School diploma , degree or equivalent. Etc.

In each case, you will need to interview anyone who possess the qualifications even if they are a white male and you are obligated ethically, morally and legally to hire the most qualified person for the job. By including these competencies in your description, provided they are real and required, it increases the likelihood you will interview and ultimately hire a Hmong for this sales role.

You just positively impacted the bottom line of your company AND fulfilled whatever EEO/AA requirements you may have in the process.

About the author:

Carl Braun is the Senior Vice-President of Strategic Recruiting for The Inclusiv* Group (formerly Diversity Recruiters International Inc). He is the former President of DiversityInc Careers , Vice-President of DiversityInc Magazine and author of the books “Success is Your Birthright!” and “Success is Your Birthright Too! He was the host of the ABC radio talk show “The Soapbox”  and “The Employment News Hour” Carl has been recruiting for more than 20 years.

The Inclusiv* Group , at www.Inclusiv.net, is a minority owned executive search firm dedicated to inclusion and equality in the workplace. We are experts in helping companies build cultural competency at senior levels of an organization and pride ourselves on developing candidate slates that are balanced. Carl Braun can be reached at 619-575-6577 or cfbraun@inclusiv.net .

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